the CORE Connection
an update for our participants, volunteers, and supporters from Becca Krantz, our lead organizer
November, 2013

Dear Friends and Supporters of CORE,

This morning over breakfast I read an article about “effective altruism,” a new movement among young adults to be strategic as well as passionate in their philanthropy. They advocate looking at the “hard numbers” to decide where their gifts of their time, talent, and treasure will be most effective. 

Not everything is so easily measured in numbers, but in this spirit, and with great excitement, I am writing to share with you the early “returns” on your investment in CORE.

With your help, we have made great strides in the past year to pilot and refine our groundbreaking new approach to community change-making.

We’re off and running! Earlier this year we held the inaugural round of our matchmaking and matching grant program. Through this process, we assist social change organizations in their quest to find consultants (think “personal trainer”) as they build their capacity (think “core strength) to be more effective, sustainable, and joyful in meeting their missions. 

The key to more successful matches is our “Learning Conversation,” an exploratory discussion held with each organization and consultant applicant. Conducted by a 2-person team of trained volunteer community members called “Connectors,” the conversation is an opportunity for organizational applicants to reflect on what would be most useful to them, and for consultant applicants to reflect on where and how they do their best work.

Here’s what happened in Round 1:
Some numbers: 16 Connectors were introduced to each other and to the work of 17 consultants and 8 organizations, including participating in 3 in-depth Learning Conversations each.

Even before any matches were made, this process allowed all participants to:

• Discover more about each others’ backgrounds, skills, and motivations;
  
• Listen beyond urgency and competition to reflect with curiosity, learn together, and move forward more effectively; and
  
• Expand their list of trusted sources of help and collaboration.
  

In many ways, this first process far exceeded our expectations. In particular, we’ve been told being a Connector is a fun, fascinating, and fabulous professional development experience, even for people very experienced in the non-profit sector.

The Connectors came together in a unique, facilitated process to share what they’d learned and discern the best 2-3 consultants for each organization.  All 8 organizations received these recommendations.

One Connector says, 

Being a CORE Connector was an excellent professional development opportunity for me. I learned about local consultants' areas of expertise, how their particular talents might match nonprofits' needs, and how the successful matching of consultants with nonprofits can enhance our social change efforts.
 --Marianne Morton, Executive Director, Common Wealth Development

   

With help from our generous donors we were able to provide matching grants to three of the organizations, totaling $10,500, to hire the consultant of their choice.

One funder involved with the process said, 

CORE is a great example of local social innovation. The process I participated in netted a high-quality picture of the multi-layered needs behind the organizations' requests.  --Grant Abert, Kailo Fund

The early returns on these matching efforts are just coming in. Here is how one executive director describes her organization’s capacity-building project:

Our organization recently moved from a period of very fast-paced, externally driven goals to a period with internally driven campaigns that are pro-active and more moderated, but also more ambiguous. We wanted to be deliberate in making this transition, knowing it could be a challenging switch to make for staff. Working with CORE, we were able to find a consultant who was the right fit for our organization and this project. She worked with the staff to identify and address issues related to the change in landscape - staff culture, work/life balance, interpersonal communications, and strategies for handling ambiguity. Having had mixed results in selecting consultants in the past, CORE's focus on helping us find the right consultant for our needs by getting to know our organization and project was extremely valuable. With the first two (of three) phases of our project complete, staff have found that working with the consultant helped them get out of the day to day work and think about the bigger concepts that will help us be a stronger and more effective organization. – Kerry Schumann, Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters

Another ED sums up our impact simply:

CORE provided the funding and faith to make our project possible. – Anne Katz, Arts Wisconsin

Click here to see photos from one of the Community-Wide meetings on the arts and creativity facilitated with the help of this CORE grant.

A third group was able to strategically combine CORE’s support and one of our recommended consultants with other relationships and resources to create a new, comprehensive communications campaign. The process and its results, “Citizen Voices Matter,” have significantly increased the organization’s capacity to provide timely and engaging communication about important environmental issues.

About the consultant they met through CORE, they say:

[She] provided critical instruction and guidance in the very early stages of the development of our Citizen Voices Matter campaign. She worked with the entire staff to better understand who we are and to help us understand the sphere of influence we each carry with us…. [She] provided top level professional expertise and challenged staff to break out of old assumptions in order to better understand the science of communication. …We would not have ever discovered [her] without CORE.      – Kimberlee Wright, Midwest Environmental Advocates

Click here to see the results for yourself, and hear the inspiring stories of citizens fighting to protect our land and water.

Thank you very much for helping make all of this happen through your generous financial support/financial support and gift of time and expertise/gift of time and expertise.

We’re a learning organization. We pay close attention to our process and elicit feedback from all participants along the way. We continuously look for ways to improve, and we change what we can as soon as we can. In addition to the exciting and tangible outcomes above, in following up with participants in our pilot round we got extremely helpful suggestions for revisions to our process. Much of this feedback is already being incorporated into another round of matchmaking and matching funding, currently underway. Key changes include:

• Revised, simpler applications for consultants and organizations;
• Increased attention to assessing the “readiness” of an organization to engage a consultant, and to increasing that readiness;
• Increased support for the contracting and work planning phase with a chosen consultant;
  
• Beginning to create an “enduring portfolio” of consultants, so they don’t need to reapply each round.
  

We’re expanding.  As a direct result of the first round, many more people are becoming involved with CORE. With this increased capacity, we have powerful volunteer leadership involved in our governance and outreach processes. We also are able to return to hosting regular monthly Consultants’ Circles designed to provide opportunities for relationship-building and reflection among those providing capacity-building support to community-benefit organizations.

One consultant who has participated in our Consultants’ Circles and who was matched with a nonprofit organization in Round 1 just as she was moving to Madison from Milwaukee recently wrote me and said:

I can't tell you how much easier CORE is making my personal and professional transition to a new hometown.  I had no idea how I was going to get connected with kindred folks, and CORE seemed to fall into my life like a present I never expected! -- Jennifer Wilson, New Leaf Coaching and Consulting

We’re also discovering new ways of providing “consulting for organizational reflection and effectiveness” to organizations. With our new “Taste of CORE” sessions, we are creating opportunities for community leaders to get support from each other as well as from consultants and Connectors, to move forward more effectively, sustainably, and joyfully towards their visions.  

Funders are a key ingredient in the CORE recipe. We are reaching out to area foundations to explore whether CORE’s model might be a good fit for their own efforts to support capacity building among their grantees.

And, with your help, the individual donations of time, talent, and treasure necessary to make all of this possible will also continue to grow.

Please consider making a year-end, tax-deductible gift to CORE. Your financial support allows us to train Connectors, expand our matching grants, and reach out to more community organizations - all to create lasting social change. We also encourage you to consider volunteering with CORE. Our aim is to have volunteers get as much out of their activities as we do, so please contact me today to find out if we can make that happen for you.

See our CORE Builders' Circle page for suggested gift levels and what each level could "purchase," although gifts of any amount are very welcome. Click here to make a contribution online, or send us a check made out to C4CS/CORE, 354 W. Main St., Madison, WI 53703.

During this season of Thanks-Giving, I want to say, with all of my heart, THANK YOU for your past and future support!!

Sincerely,


Becca Krantz
CORE Lead Organizer

A Taste of CORE, Nov. 21, 2013